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elfsIt took me a while to figure out who these "New, Personal All-Electric Aircraft" being sold to. The Blackfly, Volocopter, Liberty, Solexa, Cora, Lilium, and the Vahana, and so forth are all being sold (or at least pre-sold) as vertical-take off, two or three-person aircraft with super-modern software to ensure that flying this vehicle is safer than a car and easier than a video game, with all the sensors, navigational tools, and touch controls you could possibly want. The advertising gleefully tells you that electric nature of these aircraft means that your fuel supply is anywhere you could plug in a Tesla or a BMW I8, and the average reported range is about three hundred miles. With multiply redundant power supplies, autorotate enabled on some models, and a last-ditch parachute in case things really go bad, these cars are being touted as the next big thing in personal aviation, and they're even being sold as "the democratization of personal air travel."
Somewhere in America, Paul Moller is crying in his beer.
I've finally figured out what these flying cars are for. Given that the Liberty starts at $400,000, and the luxury edition goes for $600,000, the average citizen is not going to own a flying car anytime soon. On a camping trip recently, I passed by a massive mansion being constructed seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but as the crow flies only about 105 miles from downtown Seattle.
That's for whom these cars are being developed. It's not for the 0.01%, but for those between 1% and 0.01%, the ones who can't afford an island off the coast of New Zealand, but who can afford a million-dollar car that lifts them (literally) above the common people and gets them to the city in 30 minutes or less, where they trade their electric luxury airplane for their electric luxury car. This used to be the province of people who could afford helicopters, but helicopters are dangerous and expensive to operate; a local news anchor once told me that "just turning the helicopter costs a thousand dollars." But these things fit in a parking space, plug into your citys' graciously granted EV outlets, and doesn't cost you much more than your car does. (Yes, lift is much more expensive, energy-wise, than tires, and it does take something to get off the ground, but compared to aviation gasoline, electricity is cheap.)
I wonder how these people feel about The Event, the supposed coming culling of the human herd that Doug Rushkoff and Charlie Stross sometimes write about. Are they hoping that their out-of-the-way-ness means they'll be safe from the great disaster that comes when the food, water, and electricity distribution networks freeze up? I doubt it; they've still got neighbors and they've made their homes in places where the locals are used to walking long miles.
Electric flying cars are just another of those metaphorical walls the rich are obliged to build, only it's a barrier made of distance and energy, not of brick and mortar. It's a way for the rich to escape the city (and not having to pay it any property taxes!) while also leaving the city intact and accessible, another resource to be mined rather than a place to be lived.
Somewhere in America, Paul Moller is crying in his beer.
I've finally figured out what these flying cars are for. Given that the Liberty starts at $400,000, and the luxury edition goes for $600,000, the average citizen is not going to own a flying car anytime soon. On a camping trip recently, I passed by a massive mansion being constructed seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but as the crow flies only about 105 miles from downtown Seattle.
That's for whom these cars are being developed. It's not for the 0.01%, but for those between 1% and 0.01%, the ones who can't afford an island off the coast of New Zealand, but who can afford a million-dollar car that lifts them (literally) above the common people and gets them to the city in 30 minutes or less, where they trade their electric luxury airplane for their electric luxury car. This used to be the province of people who could afford helicopters, but helicopters are dangerous and expensive to operate; a local news anchor once told me that "just turning the helicopter costs a thousand dollars." But these things fit in a parking space, plug into your citys' graciously granted EV outlets, and doesn't cost you much more than your car does. (Yes, lift is much more expensive, energy-wise, than tires, and it does take something to get off the ground, but compared to aviation gasoline, electricity is cheap.)
I wonder how these people feel about The Event, the supposed coming culling of the human herd that Doug Rushkoff and Charlie Stross sometimes write about. Are they hoping that their out-of-the-way-ness means they'll be safe from the great disaster that comes when the food, water, and electricity distribution networks freeze up? I doubt it; they've still got neighbors and they've made their homes in places where the locals are used to walking long miles.
Electric flying cars are just another of those metaphorical walls the rich are obliged to build, only it's a barrier made of distance and energy, not of brick and mortar. It's a way for the rich to escape the city (and not having to pay it any property taxes!) while also leaving the city intact and accessible, another resource to be mined rather than a place to be lived.
